All right, enough already. This has gone on long enough. Tiger Woods closes strong on a Saturday … he's back! Makes a charge on a Sunday … he's back! Beats a limited field during silly season … he's back! First legit PGA Tour win in 2½ years, and obviously not a major … he's back!

And now, a turn-back-the-clock performance at the tournament that Jack Nicklaus built over the weekend, propelled by a shot that immediately entered the Tiger pantheon, possibly at the very top. As that chip from off the 16th green rolled in — giving him the Memorial lead for good — the hyperbole exploded from all corners of the globe.

He's back!

Suuuure, he is. You said it last time. Not falling for it again. Not after so many teases. (Probably not the best choice of words in describing Tiger's, uh, career interruption, but stay focused here.)

But … suppose it's not hyperbole.

Suppose Tiger Woods really is back? Suppose he really is about to start owning the golf world again, and taking the rest of the sports world along for the ride? Suppose the victory at the Memorial, and the shot that made it possible, gave not just a glimpse of the past, but a glimpse of the future?

If it is — if he is — then we're in for a wild ride again. And the competition is in for another long stretch of misery.

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Remember, when he won that classic U.S. Open playoff on a broken leg and pre-surgical knee in 2008, Nicklaus' record of 18 majors seemed to have a terribly short shelf life. In the four years since, as Tiger flailed personally and professionally, it became much safer.

Let's say this much: The years of the Tiger Slams are probably over. And give the skeptics credit when they point out that after winning Arnold Palmer's Bay Hill Invitational in March, Woods bombed at the Masters.

Still, if Woods takes that same game he showed off at the Memorial to the Olympic Club for the U.S. Open two weekends from now, and wins that, what once seemed like an easy skip from 14 to 18, which then seemed to grown into a canyon, goes back to comfortably within range.

For all the signs that he was breaking down physically, that he couldn't master this latest change in swings, that he couldn't carry his practices over to his actual competition, and that he would never bring that pre-scandal single-minded focus to his post-divorce life … the Memorial, and Tiger himself, reminded everybody that Woods is still only 36.

As we've all heard ad infinitum since Sunday evening, that's 10 years earlier than when Nicklaus won his 73rd career tournament … that being the out-of-nowhere Masters win in 1986, which was, of course, also majors win No. 18.

Does it really seem that implausible now that Woods can win four more majors in the next 10 years?

Is it that implausible that he can win one this year?

Or two?

Tiger actually doesn't need that. A major every couple of years. Two or three other wins a year to go with it. Not quite the output we're used to, that he made look routine for so long … but enough to get him past Nicklaus before he hits the age the Golden Bear was on that final Masters Sunday. And to put even Sam Snead's career wins record of 82 in his rear-view mirror as well.

It's within range now. Nothing can really be written off.

Not that long ago, it was presumed that Tiger's days of breaking opponents' will was over, that he couldn't even crack the regular guys — like, say, Spencer Levin, who led Tiger most of Sunday. Forget the better players, of course, like the immortal Rory Sabbatini, author of the “more beatable than ever” crack in '07.

Time to re-think that.

The true biggest obstacle, of course, should be the presence of a competitor, or group of competitors, that can keep him at arm's length. The sport has had a good two-plus years to find that player, or those players.

Here's an update on that:

Rory McIlroy, anointed the next one in a giddy, gloating rush after last year's U.S. Open, missed the cut at the Memorial, his third consecutive missed cut and the eighth of his five-year career. Nothing catastrophic for a 23-year-old of his caliber … but exceedingly un-Tiger-like, and un-Tiger-usurper-like.

Phil Mickelson withdrew after the first round with “fatigue.” OK.

Bad timing for both of them. Mickelson and McIlroy had a nice, big window to step through, take possession of the sport and embed extreme doubt into Woods' psyche.

It might be too late now … might be.

It's still a very big “if.” But it's a tantalizing “if.”

If Tiger is indeed back, then it's just a matter of time before Jack Nicklaus is handing over something a lot bigger than his own tournament's beautiful trophy.